Last year was a good one for Global Experience Specialists, with the recent earnings report indicating that GES scored a 14.6 percent increase in Q4 revenues, from $213.4 million during the same quarter in 2014 to $244.5 million last year.

In addition, GES’ full-year revenues also saw a 3.4 percent increase, from $944.5 million in 2014 to $976.9 million last year.

“We had a very good 4^th quarter for both of our businesses,” said Steve Moster, Viad president and CEO. He added that the 4^th quarter beat expectations, and the full-year results were in line with expectations.

For the full-year, Moster said, “The more modest full-year revenue growth reflects solid performance from the acquisitions we completed during 2014, strong same-show growth and new wins that helped to offset significant negative show rotation and unfavorable exchange rates.“

He added that overall same-show growth of 8 percent was particularly strong last year.

In addition, strong revenues were driven as result of the acquisitions of several companies at the end of 2014 – including onPeak, Travel Planners, N200 and Blitz.

“2015 was a great year for the acquisitions,” Moster said. “They are now all fully integrated as well.”

Part of that integration was introducing the new companies and the services they offered – accommodations, registration and AV – to not only existing and potential clients, but also the company’s team members.

In order to make the integration as smooth as possible and support offering services based on clients’ needs, Moster said the leaders from all of the companies got together to “really understand the breadth of services provided, look at the opportunity map and (also) identify synergies between businesses.”

At the annual GES kick-off meeting last year, each of the business segments was presented in detail “to really bring everyone up to speed about each other,” Moster said.

Looking into the future, he added, the company wants to expand the existing offerings, such as onPeak, into overseas markets and bring overseas services, such as registration, over to North America.

As far as the overall outlook for this year, Moster said, “We continue to see good sales traction in both our new service offerings and in corporate and consumer events, as well as favorable industry conditions.  Looking ahead, those factors, combined with positive show rotation, should result in substantial year-over-year growth in 2016."